AMD's x86 market share at all-time high

Despite posting a $527 million operating loss in Q4 http://www.edn.com/article/CA6409667.html?partner=enews that lead to a plunge in its stock price, some analysts say that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) http://www.amd.com is actually at an all-time high for x86 market share.

According to market research firm Mercury Research http://www.mercuryresearch.com, AMD's Q4 worldwide overall x86 microprocessor unit market share is now at an all time high of 25.3 percent, an 8 percent increase over its Q3 share of 23.3 percent.

The firm added that AMD made 2.5 percent unit market share gains in both desktop and mobile microprocessor segments, the latter of which, the firm said, is the fastest growing segment of the market. In the multi-processor server space, which is now 13.8 percentof the overall x86 server space, AMD now holds 64.5 percent of the unit market, up from 59.6 percent in Q3, Mercury Research said.

As for AMD adversary Intel Corp. http://www.intel.com, the top-ranked chipmaker gained a mere 1.4 percent in server share in the quarter, "even after introducing new dual-core server processors in Q2 http://www.edn.com/article/CA6307530.html and multi-chip module quad-core processors in Q4 http://www.edn.com/article/CA6390916.html," the firm noted.